Naughty Dog Delivers the Goods with Uncharted: The Lost Legacy

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In the video game industry, few developers have earned the level of prestige that Naughty Dog enjoys. Not only does the team benefit from a reputation for making beloved characters and franchises, but their technical skills are beyond reproach. And with the release of Uncharted: The Lost Legacy this week, we’re being treated to yet another top-tier production hot on the heels of Uncharted 4.

Last May, A Thief’s End thoroughly awed us. The performance capture, the highly detailed environments, and the stable 1080p30 performance on the base PS4 was laudable. And around the time the PS4 Pro shipped, Uncharted 4 received HDR and 1440p support through a patch. Needless to say, the enhancements were much appreciated. And since The Lost Legacy is built on that very same technology, we went in with high expectations.

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Because Naughty Dog and its corporate overlords are particularly confident in their games, press embargoes ended well before this title hit store shelves. Reviews are just about everywhere, large swaths of the gameplay are available in videos, and the consensus is quite positive. Over at our sister site IGN, The Lost Legacy earned a Good score of 7.5 out of 10 – the lower end of this game’s critical range. The reviewer, Marty Sliva, enjoyed the experience, but felt the game lacked the same impact as last year’s installment.

With 65 reviews logged in Metacritic, this smaller release has a metascore of 86/100. That’s not as high as Uncharted 4‘s impressive 93/100, but the smaller scope and the relatively small changes of the tech make for a game that’s not quite as bombastic. But with the likes of Game Informer, Destructoid, and GameSpot assigning it scores of 9/10, it’s clear that many people are still completely bowled over by Naughty Dog’s quick turn around here.

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With the embargo out of the way well ahead of release, the folks over at Digital Foundry were free to release a complete technical breakdown of the game. Just as you’d expect, the vanilla PS4 sits at 1080p at 30fps, and it looks superb. There are a few instances of brief drops in frame rate just as with A Thief’s End, but those are exceedingly rare.

On the PS4 Pro, the resolution seems to be 1440p, but pixel counts aren’t consistent. It’s unknown whether it’s due to the temporal anti-aliasing or if a dynamic resolution is actually in place here, but it’s on par with the previous game. And if you’re still using a full HD display, you’ll benefit from downsampling.

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Of course, a 60fps bump would have been nice, but that’s simply not in the cards – not even on the Pro. But thanks to the slow-mo mode available in-game, Digital Foundry can speed up the captured video by 200% to simulate a 60fps experience. It’s absolutely lovely, but a tiny bit frustrating since it’s out of reach for live gameplay.

The Lost Legacy does ship with a multiplayer mode, but it’s exactly what you already have in Uncharted 4. Some new skins and tweaks are being patched into the multiplayer, but you’ll have the same experience with either game. Most modes hit 900p60 on the standard PS4, and 1080p60 on the Pro. Survival mode appears to run at 1080p on both models, but with the 30fps cap we see in single player.